Tim James's thoughts about South Africa's wines.

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Top 100 SA wines? Well, not quite

The latest competition for South African wines – and perhaps the most widely unwelcomed in the media in advance, for right and wrong reasons – announced its results at a function on 19 April. One hundred wines had been chosen out of a just-about respectable 390 valid entries. They are presented without any internal hierarchy – just an alphabetical list (from Aaldering to Zorgvliet; see the full list below), with no scores attached. That is, the judges’ task was to elimate just under three out of each four bottles.

Looking positively at it all (and I’m afraid I’m always a competition sceptic, and more convinced by the problems), the 100 winners are mostly good wines, though there are a few that one wonders about – but there always are anomalies in such competitions. Personally, I think it much more sensible to offer a bank of winners like this, rather than parcelling out medals and rankings, which just tend, too often, to point to the problem of odd judgements. And certainly most of the winning producers will prefer this system. (The also-ran wines are always carefully catered for by organisers, who never mention them – this competition abides by that universal bit of organiser cynicism: don’t reveal the losers, it makes producers unhappy!)

And, going by what various judges have told me, Top 100 was clearly a well-organised and happy event. Panel chair Tim Atkin is quoted as saying that “Top 100 SA wines is one of the most exciting projects I have ever been involved with, setting new standards of professionalism and integrity for the Cape wine industry” (which is surely somewhat excessive, and grossly unfair to, for example, the Trophy Wine Show – but I should think he’ll be invited back next year, wouldn’t you?).

On the basis of what it has produced in its inaugural year, I should also think owner/organiser Robin von Holdt will be well satisfied, and feel entitled to expect a better entry next year.

Presumably some of the strange inclusions in the Top 100 list are because of the fairly small number of entries, but some of the inclusions and presumed exclusions are odd. Not a single Pinot Noir, though nine were apparently entered, and would presumably have included those of Bouchard Finlayson and Paul Cluver. The idea that those wines are not superior to some of the actual winners is baffling, even if you don’t think SA pinots are that great (but are our merlots that great? – not the Creation and Slaley ones, in my opinion, which are on the list, and which I tasted at the launch function).

And (also presumably), Steenberg would have entered the esteemed Steenberg Sauvignon Blanc Reserve, if not the Magna Carta – but it was the pretty modest Steenberg HMS Rattlesnake which the judges chose.

Top-performing producers were Saronsberg and Cederberg; between them they apparently produce one tenth of the top 100 wines in the country.

Incidentally, an overview of the winners shows a pretty equal distribution between white and red: 46 white (plus seven bubblies and dessert wines) versus 43 red (plus four ports). The white triumph is more marked, however, when you learn from the statistics supplied in the book that there were vastly more red than white table wines entered – 222 as opposed to 143!

Of the whites, chenin was the easy leader, which is nice, followed by sauvignon and then chardonnay. The reds were led pretty equally by cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, and Bordeaux-style blends.

So to the real problems

The main problem is what the main problem was always going to be: the name of the competition, and the words that appear on the cover of the book. They come nowhere near expressing the truth. Which is a polite way of saying it’s a lie: these are by a very long distance not the top 100 South African wines. Just to list the most obvious absentees, it is nonsense to call your book this, when the non-appearances include Ataraxia, Boekenhoutskloof, Chamonix, De Toren, De Trafford, Eagles’ Nest, Haskell, Kanonkop, Meerlust, Morgenster, Sadie, Vergelegen and Waterford – a list which could be augmented by at least as many again famous names.

The list of a Top 100 that Angela Lloyd drew up for Grape from the votes of nine industry professionals recently (see here) is obviously not definitive by any means, but it does provide a useful measure for comparison. Of the ten wines that ALL nine Grape panellists voted for, only three are represented here. Of the producers in Angela’s list, 48 (by my rough count) did NOT enter this competition, while just 23 did.

Is it a problem that wines of the two South African winemaker-judges came through? And that all the winemakers on Robin von Holdt’s absurdly named “Wine Industry Executive” were also represented amongst the winners? Perhaps it is a problem for the “professionalism and integrity” that so enthused Tim Atkin – and I say that in sincere confidence that the winemakers didn’t judge their own wines, and that Tim’s chairing and integrity would have been beyond reproach. But in the absence of any mention on the website or the press release of any independent auditors, it is going to make some eyebrows rise. (I will follow up the question of an independent audit as soon as possible.)

The book

The book-of-the-show will apparently only be available in the first week of May. At R149, it’s something of a disappointment, in fact. Apart from nice maps, a fragment of industry information, some background stuff about the competition itself, and a little this and that, it is devoted to presenting the winning 100 wines. Two pages for each (the book is about as wide as Platter, but a little taller, and thinner), including a picture of the label, and some widely-spaced information about the winery and the wine, to accompany the judges’ and winemaker’s comments about the wine. But a trifle oddly, amongst the welter of information, the acidity and residual sugar levels of the wines (important info for geeks!) is absent.

I most enjoyed, I’m afraid, the statistics and logistics about the competition – from the number of entries that were “declined” (15 of them – why? something else to follow up), to the number of water biscuits consumed (3600). Fascinatingly there were only 40 faulty wines, of which corked wine counted for 23; only four had brett, which is cheering. But none at all, apparently, showed the notorious burnt rubber, which, given that Tim Atkin and Sam Harrop were involved – both famous accusers of South African wine being full of that nasty character – is extraordinary. If we didn’t have Tim’s assurance about the integrity of the whole business, I’d have thought it was a bit of a misrepresentation!